Interactive Learning Experiences, Grades 6-12: Increasing Student Engagement and Learning - Paperback

by David Samuel Smokler (Author)

"This book will excite teachers who want to motivate today′s secondary students. Information about the brain, presented along with the author′s personal teaching experiences, tips, and creative game ideas, makes for a very worthwhile read!"
--Cindy Bean, Seventh-Grade Math Teacher
Arcola Intermediate Middle School, Schwenksville, PA

Energize adolescents with memorable and engaging learning experiences!

Research shows that the adolescent brain is wired to seek novelty and ignore familiar stimuli. This innovative resource demonstrates how teachers can transform everyday classroom lectures into memorable experiences and reinforce course content by introducing new, different, and surprising elements into daily lessons.

Based on brain-compatible teaching principles, the updated edition of Making Learning Come Alive shows how to use stimulating interactive learning experiences to connect teenagers with content. Teachers will find activities and ideas for introducing each learning experience and will discover how to design and assess their own. Updated throughout, this new edition offers:

• Nine new sample learning experiences, including four in math and science
• A revised assessment chapter that covers standards-based education and NCLB
• Reflection questions in each chapter

The learning activities can be used as is or modified to connect with hundreds of themes and concepts across middle school and high school curricula.

Author Biography

David Smokler, MAT, graduated from Connecticut College in 1996 with a degree in English and with teaching credentials. After graduation David accepted a job teaching juvenile offenders on a horse-drawn, cross-country, covered wagon train. He planned lessons and taught literature and writing to more than fifty incarcerated students while traveling twenty to twenty-five miles a day on horse- and mule-drawn wagons from Pennsylvania to southwest Texas. On the wagon train, David began to develop some of the experiences that can now be found in his books. After another year teaching juvenile offenders in prison, David moved to Cape Cod, where he taught for four years while completing his Master of Arts in Teaching English at Bridgewater State College. David conducted original research on simulation games as a graduate student. David currently teaches English in Needham, Massachusetts.